At the culmination of The Last of Us' story, Joel and Ellie seemingly ended their journey after escaping the Fireflies. The two made it safely to Jackson, despite the uncertainty between them. While a cure to the Cordyceps infection potentially could have been found at the Firefly hospital, Joel deemed it not worth the risk of losing Ellie. Even the Fireflies leader Marlene tried to stop Joel from taking Ellie away, believing that a cure was possible. "You'd just come after her," he said, right before he killed Marlene and left for Jackson.
Marlene's death was meant to be the final act of violence by Joel's hands, the severing of his past life as a smuggler. Ellie became his new "something to fight for," a reason to keep surviving. What he didn't realize was that he was right, just not how he imagined it. Marlene's death at the hands of Joel wasn't the clean break that Joel assumed it was. His life of violence had caught up to him with The Last of Us Part 2, and while it wasn't Marlene who came back, Joel's actions at the end of the first game instead became the pinnacle of violence.
Joel's Attempt At Breaking the Cycle of Violence
The naivety of Joel, a man who likely crossed and double-crossed several people in his lifetime, is epitomized by this quote. "You'd just come after her," represents him trying to cut the violent streak out of his life, even though his existence after Outbreak Day has been nothing but violence. He began and perpetuated an existence of violence in the 20 years between Sarah's death and the events of The Last of Us, where he eventually sees Ellie as an escape. If Ellie hadn't come along and Tess was never infected, Joel probably would've remained the ruthless smuggler he had become.
Little does he know, Joel and Ellie's journey only worsens his cycle of violence because he needs to protect her at all costs. Of course, this does end up deeply affecting the impressionable Ellie, but it also shows that Joel doesn't really change with time. While he may have taken on a more docile lifestyle in Jackson between the events of The Last of Us and Part 2, he's still the same man he always was since his smuggling days. Killing Marlene wasn't a bookend for Joel, it was just a pinnacle of countless violent acts he'd carried on those he didn't know or care about. Obviously as fans learn in The Last of Us Part 2, it turns out violence eventually begets violence.
Marlene's Death Was an Amplification, Not a Severance
Joel's reckoning at the hands of Abby is one certainly brought on by The Last of Us' ending, but it's more than just her desire for revenge. Joel was killed with the exact same fervor that he used to murder several other men before him. While his death is certainly sudden and shocking to The Last of Us veterans, it was undeniably an inevitability and product of his life. That being said, that same cycle of violence left a whirlwind of destruction in its path, one that pushed Abby over the edge. In a way, Abby ends up finishing up exactly what Joel started.
That much is clear once she kills Joel, as Abby's clearly the opposite of relieved once she finishes it. Joel's killing of her dad forced Abby into the same cycle of violence that Joel started in the first place. It became her obsession to find and get revenge on Joel for taking away her father, passing on that desire and perpetuation of violence onto Abby. Once that threat of violence is ended, she returns to the Wolves to live out her own character arc, untainted by Joel's violence any longer. Unbeknownst to her, this cycle of violence passed on from Abby onto Ellie, spurring her on to the same exact warpath that Abby found herself in after her father was killed.
Joel Perpetuates a Trifecta of Violence in The Last of Us
This cycle of violence is passed on between others repeatedly, and even at the end of The Last of Us Part 2, it's never truly finished. Abby had broken away from that cycle of violence only by ending Joel's life, and was only brought back to her because the cycle had passed on to Ellie. Ellie can't break the cycle of violence, even though she's incapable of enacting her revenge. She's tormented by regret; regret from leaving Dina and her child behind, and regret from not killing Abby. Ellie is left to live out the rest of her days (or not, depending on how the ending of the second game is interpreted) with this violent urge left within her, tainted by Joel's actions without a way to cure it.
"You'd just come after her" may have been said to Marlene, but it also helped symbolize how the threat of violence that Joel caused would eventually catch up to him. And, well, it certainly did. Just not in the way that he would've ever expected. Violence, revenge, and hatred spiraled from there, and eventually those same feelings did come after her.
The Last of Us Part 2 is available now on PS4.